Conservation and Indigenous Peoples the Adoption of the Ecological Noble Savage Discourse and Its Political Consequences
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Sarah Rodrigue-Allouche Conservation and Indigenous Peoples The adoption of the ecological noble savage discourse and its political consequences Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History 1 Abstract Rodrigue-Allouche, S. 2015. Conservation and indigenous peoples, the adoption of the ecologi- cal noble savage discourse and its political consequences. Uppsala, Dept of Archaeology and Ancient History. In this thesis, I shall follow the lead of many environmental scholars who stated that the con- structed dualism between Nature and humans have had serious consequences for indigenous peoples worldwide in areas impacted by colonization. I will consider the essentialism that has been directed towards indigenous populations, and more specifically positive essentialism ex- pressing itself in the myth of the ecological noble savage. I will discuss how the idea of land stewardship has been used as a political tool by different stakeholders, thus jeopardizing the very right to self-determination. Finally, I will contend that the tool of ecological nobility cannot pro- vide indigenous peoples with the human rights they deserve as members of humanity, notably land rights. I will argue for an ethical environmentalism, one in which all peoples are expected to participate in the same way. Keywords: Indigenous, Conservation, Essentialism, Eco-nobility, Land-rights Master’s thesis in Global Environmental History (60 credits), supervisor: Anneli Ekblom, © Sarah Rodrigue-Allouche Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Box 626, 75126 Uppsala, Sweden 2 Thesis acknowledgements I would like to take the opportunity here to thank a few people for the realisation of this work. First, I want to thank my supervisor and program coordinator Anneli Ekblom for her patience and constructive feedback. I thank the Uppsala University International Office for giving me the chance to study abroad in Australia and gain new understandings that have determined my thesis work. Special thanks to Anna Borgstrom from the Language Department for her astute insights. Also thank you to Kenneth Worthy and Flora Lu Holt, great teachers at UC Santa Cruz. On a more personal note, I would like to thank my family members for their support, especially my parents Catherine and Philippe, my sisters Déborah and Eve, and my aunt and uncle Pascale and Bruno Hayem for enabling me to use their apartment for my work, I thank my friends in Australia especially Liza Smith, Sue Ellen Simic and the St Mark’s girls, I thank my friends in Sweden whose help and support have been decisive in my work, particularly Fredrik Olsson, Isabelle Moreno di Palma and Eva Myhrman. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to a woman who stood in my journey as light in the darkness, Maria Attard. 3 John F. Kennedy [Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962] “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our fore- bears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opin- ion without the discomfort of thought. 4 Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 7 Conservation, a short history (from discrimination to inclusion) ............................................................. 7 Indigenous: a brief historiography (from colonial definition to self-determination) ............................... 8 The issue of essentialism (the ecological noble savage myth) ............................................................... 11 Questions & Aims .................................................................................................................................. 12 Thesis outline ......................................................................................................................................... 13 Methodology .......................................................................................................................................... 13 PART I Discourses regarding Indigenous peoples ..................................................................................... 14 A. Dichotomies leading to essentialism ................................................................................................. 14 1. Dichotomies between man and nature ........................................................................................... 14 2. The civilised vs the wild ................................................................................................................ 18 3. The ambivalence towards wild peoples: conservation racism ....................................................... 20 B. The ecological noble savage: a variant of essentialism ..................................................................... 24 1. Indigenous peoples and their environment: intentional or epiphenomenal conservation? ............ 24 2. Indigenous peoples, merely humans .............................................................................................. 26 3. Eco-noble savage: essentialism and epistemological racism ........................................................ 28 Part II How has land stewardship been used as a political tool? The responsibility put upon indigenous peoples and the issue of self-determination ................................................................................................ 32 A- Intentional hybridity and the myth of the noble savage ................................................................ 32 1. Worldviews in which conservation is a foreign concept .......................................................... 32 2. The catch-22 of conservation ................................................................................................... 35 3. What is intentional hybridity? .................................................................................................. 38 B - Eco-nobility as a political tool, special status and TEK used in global environmental governance: community-based conservation, responsibility, dangers and risks of essentialism ........... 41 1. Eco-nobility: a dangerous tool .................................................................................................. 41 2. Community-based conservation, a revival of old ghosts .......................................................... 44 3. Traditional Ecological Knowledge, conservation programmes and the right to self- determination ............................................................................................ Erreur ! Signet non défini. Part III - Land management, indigenous activism and the ENS myth: comparison between Kayapo and Yolngu ............................................................................................................... Erreur ! Signet non défini. A- The case of the Kayapo Indians ........................................................... Erreur ! Signet non défini. 1. Context ............................................................................................ Erreur ! Signet non défini. 2. Alliance between Kayapo and NGOs .............................................. Erreur ! Signet non défini. 3. Ecological noble savagery and its pitfalls ....................................... Erreur ! Signet non défini. B- A different case: Aboriginal activism in Australia and the success of the Dhimurru IPA in Arnhem Land................................................................................................. Erreur ! Signet non défini. 1. Aboriginal activism: based on democracy and human-rights.......... Erreur ! Signet non défini. 2. A mercurial aboriginal identity ....................................................... Erreur ! Signet non défini. 3. Yolngu people and the success of the Dhimurru IPA ..................... Erreur ! Signet non défini. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. Erreur ! Signet non défini. 5 6 INTRODUCTION When environmentalism emerged as a philosophy in the 19th century, with United States as one of the fore-runners of nature conservation, its philosophy partly relied on a dichotomy between man and nature and an illusory worship of a pristine wilderness. It has been said that modernity has strengthened dichotomies between reason and belief, between science and instinct, between human and non-human nature, upon which much of our contemporary societies rest (see Latour 1999, Merchant 1980; Adorno and Horkheimer 1947). Thus, in many ways, the environmental movement stands as a product of modernity. The dichotomy between man and nature that is embedded in nature conservation has brought two alternatives for indigenous peoples in colonized countries when negotiating conservation. In- deed, although recent ecological research has abundantly demonstrated that all landscapes are more or less anthropogenic (see for example Foster 2000), a few early environmentalists spread the belief that wilderness shall be free of people in order to survive. The idea that man represents a threat to nature paradoxically has coexisted with the idea that some people, the “savages”, were an inherent part of the wild. It seems that across the world, two forms of “science fictions”, the myth of wilderness and the one of incompetent land use by indigenous peoples, have been corre-